I walked down Cherry Street, past the pickle-shop and the dime store, smelling the wafting of herring and the creaky, still heat of summer. I wished for a picture in my head of this same town, forty years ago, when the sea hadn't blasted in yet through the cracks and the paint was blue and fresh. Now, a shingle fallen off here and there looked just the way the people did - old and tired with their dusty coveralls and plaid shirts, and snack-tins too. Did they even know the world had moved on without them?

Two women sat on the bench outside Sal's grocery, their faces lines although they couldn't each have been more than thirty. They chatted as though nothing would ever change, nothing left space for new conversations, and as if they each knew what the other was saying before she said it.

And that's when it happened. The shiny red buggy rolled into town.